I've been an ATi fan since I built my first PC with a 9600 256MB card. I have to say AMD has now proven it can handle the legacy of ATi. I haven't bought a new graphics card for myself since the X1900XT (been waiting for something like this to happen), and in just a short time I will be getting the 4870X2.

A $500 to be card seems to dominate and combination of alternatives (even more expensive ones) in most applications. If nothing else, this will drive down the price-gauging of nVidia's new GTXs, and make the life of enthusiasts and gamers alike, much more interesting. Regardless, go AMD, bring the competition.

Afterthought: If only AMD put this much brilliance into their Phenom X3 processors. I think the X3 idea has a lot of potential, just needs some more TLC. Reply

I have 3 ati 4870x2 on an asus workstation motherboard with 4 intel qx9850, i'm going for the 3d mark world record, using linux. Because it is the only operating system that well utilize all 4 cpu's and my 3 video cards. It is water cooled by liquid nitrogen. Reply

Anand, I really enjoy your site, but please, get rid of Derek Wilson, not only does he fail miserably at showing that he really knows how to bench video cards (like when he tried to prove how his methodology is better than HardOCP) but he makes huge mistakes in judgement.

First off, how come he doesn't answer the simple question of how is it possible that you guys, the most respected HW site got an X2 with only 1GB in RAM...many posts talk about this yet he has not even tried to reply. Second, his take on the performance results is simply flawed. If he had read the specs of the X2 as the rest of the sites and noted that the card had 2GB of RAM, the GRID results could have been easily explained by the additional frame buffer memory (1gb vs. 512mb) instead of coming with outlandish remarks about how there are internal aspects of the card that push the performance considerably above a regular crossfire setup.

As I tell you I really like your site and I respect all of those who write here, but seriously for such a professional site such as yours it's really sad that you have a person like Mr. Wilson in your staff. I hope this is taken as constructive critisism and not as bashing...I'm a long time reader of your site and I have no intention of having anythg different in my mind than helping this site become even better. Reply

I did see the corrections were made regarding the huge mistakes in the original preview, so kudos for fixing them. Still I stand by my statements about the person in question...this kind of annoying mistakes are becoming more and more common on this site (on the graphics department). Knowing the Anand's professionalism these kind of noob mistakes (how about contacting AMD/ATI and asking them why the results might be so different) should not be allowed. Reply

It is likely that the extra 512MB of RAM available to each GPU has significantly impacted perforamnce since we are testing with all the options cranked up and 4xAA.

Anyways, I can't wait to see tests with 2x 4780X2 going! I also would have liked to see the 4780 (single) in all of the tests, but I figured the card would get roughly half of the performance of the new X2. No big deal.

The power consumption diagrams are making me realize why the 1000W+ PSUs exist. :) Good gravy, boy! A guy would have to pick up an extra shift or job just to pay the electric bill for the new cards coming out these days. Then again, most guys who buy this card likely live in their parent's basement. :p

Kind of annoying you didn't include the ATI Radeon HD 4870 card in every test, as that's the most expensive one most people will care about. The $500+ stuff is ridiculous. The $299 card is a bit more worth reading about.

The other thing is how you have to test at 2560x now just to show the biggest differences. Kinda shows that something like an 8800GT is still fine for 1680x and even 1920x for most games. Reply

Let's see this is a preview about AMD's new high-end card that will directly compete with the 280. Of course most of us will never buy it, it doesn't mean it isn't important. There is already a review about the $300 card, it came out already with an indepth review.

Every comparison has a nice graph and chart at the bottom showing performance at several different resolutions. If you are too lazy to THINK instead of just looking at the pretty color bars and seeing which one is longer, that's on you.

Really these complaints are just getting rediculous. If they failed to review the cheaper cards or only showed a single resolution/setting (cough...cough..(H)) then I could see your point. Fact of the matter is people shelling out >$500 for a graphics card probably DO have the screens with the resolutions in the bar graphs. Reply

No offense to you, but it would seem to me that they were just a bit lazy on making the extra lines in the graph. I know that at Guru3D that they include different resolutions in the graphs.

To me, it's not that I'm lazy, but it's a lot more difficult to compare different numbers across a range of cards and settings than it is to see which one is above and/or below others on a graph. Reply

So, AMD needs to bring their drivers to the point where all games of the past benefit from multi-GPU? Are you sure we need to play 5-10 years old games (assuming they even run on todays systems) at 5000fps just to prove a point? :P Reply

Very interesting to see the 8800gt sli outperforming the gtx 280 in two of the game tests. They can be had so cheap so I'm alwayes interested in info on them. Also pleased to see Oblivion as a test. The 4870x2 will has potential but as you said it really depends on the driver department. If ATI could come out with some solid reliable and fast drivers the 4870x2 should take off. Reply

THANK YOU FOR INCLUDING OBLIVION! I think that this graphic heavy title does NOT get enough attention sometimes! Sure it's not as new, but it still doesn't run at high FPS with everything on high at a high resolution! Keep including it! Reply

Because i've no idea how Derek gets these frame rates at 2560x1600 with only 512MB usable VRAM. I guess once again they are using a special magical version that magically fits all those textures PLUS AA into 512MB @ 2560x1600 res.

From looking at dodgy charts like this before i got a 9800GX2 and that was a joke for this res, always running into the memory limit, where your'd then go into the realm of the slide show. It wasn't just me btw, every other owner of the GX2 with a 30" monitor i spoke to had this problem. As for GRID that wasn't even anywhere near playable with 2xAA, let alone 4 times @ 2560x1600 - again the memory limit. Yet anand and some other sites have these magical versions....

"Today's article is merely a preview as R700s won't be officially launched for at least another month, but AMD wanted to unveil a bit of what it's cooking."

This is starting to drift back in to paper launch territory, which makes me uneasy. It strikes me that allowing early previews is just as much about sinking the GTX 280 as it is showcasing a new product, which leads to the same kind of problems that we've seen in the past with paper launchers. While I love AT's CPU previews, those are both several months in advance and are for a product with a longer shelf life; I'm not sure GPU previews are necessarily as fair.

I really don't want to see this becoming a habit, with companies previewing products early enough that it's always untenable to buy something because there's something better just around the corner (except that we don't know how far). Reply

I don't really have a problem with previews like this as long as AnandTech and the manufacturer can guarantee the GPU/CPU/PSU/WhateverU will be released in reasonable quantity in a reasonable amount of time.

As long as AMD/NV can avoid another 7900GTX 512MB or X800XT PE paper launch debacle they should be given the benefit of the doubt, for now, IMHO. Reply

I've become curious as this is like the 4-5th comment I've come across that talks about a 2GB model and a 1GB model. What I'm curious is whether or not you are talking about a 2x2GB model, to make 4GB across 2 cards, or just 2GB in total RAM, because the one on this site has 2GB of RAM total 2x1GB, 4GB across 2 cards.

I have a feeling many are just getting confused, but I'd like to sk to make sure. Reply

AMD, you fail! Without even reading the whole article, which I will finish in a sec, that board layout already has me in a tizzy. Are you really going to point the PCI-E 8 and 6 pint connectors facing that way? Maybe because it's so long, but I am not sure I like that idea of having a stiff cable (most PS's these days have sleeved cables) having to be routed that way. Then again, I am flying off half-cocked right now, so (if you live around Austin, TX and listen to 93.7 12 to 1, you'll know I am part of Snatch... so this may just all backfire in my face after I get done reading the article). Reply

Yeah, I have to agree that is a stupid way to point the connectors..... DOWN? They should be pointed towards the wall of the computer, not the bottom of the computer, in order to take into account that most people have a card or three UNDERNEATH those video cards. Reply

Maybe they are going to release even better results with the 2GB version and blow away Nvida!?

I am a Nvidia Fan Boy - or should I say - who ever gots the biggest guns Fan Boy, so if ATI brings in the meat and potatos, Ill eat em all up.

PS: I have an ASUS X38 DDR3 with QX9650 & 2 Gigs DDR3 1600 7-7-7-20, and I have been running just 1 EVGA 8800 Ultra Because SLI is not supported with this mobo, so when I upgraded from the 680i I sold my other Ultra...

But!!!!!!!! This MOBO HAS CrossFIRE!!!

As almost all other X38/X48 Mobos do! And I have been waiting for a Cross Fire solution that was worthy. If I could just get 2 of the 4870x2 cards in my system for Quad GPU - that would be really nice - give my Dorkfielf 4.0 something to do. LOL

PS; Also need to upgrade to Vista 64 as a 32 bit OS would not like 4 gigabytes of ram on the video cards, and with 2GBs system memory - may be a problem - plus upgrade ro 4 GBs of course...
Reply

Hm, reply on your PS: try to install service pack 1 for Vista... my 4 gigs are there... before it was only 3.3 gigs... i have read somewhere that the new core in SP1 supports higher ram amounts... Reply

It doesn't? That's funny: every single testing place I have seen says that when you have a lot of memory on the card to hold textures and other things, it does help with performance a lot, since they don't have to page things to the hard drive or pull things from the hard drive as often. Reply

That's if, AND ONLY IF, all the stuff doesn't already fit onto the cards memory. Most of the time you'll run the FPS into the ground before that happens, negating any performance gain you may possibly get. If, however, you happen to find a game where the FPS remains high, like in GRID, then it will help. Course, you'd need quite a big monitor to get a resolution that high, but that's beside the point. Reply

They probably haven't released a new driver for these cards yet and expect you to use the driver they include on the disk with the card. Wait until next month, they will most likely finally have a driver on their website for these cards. Reply

You can do that now by creating an Overdrive profile in the control center, and editing the profile's file (Documents/username/AppData/Local/ATI/ACE/profilename.xml) in Notepad. There's a line in there for fan speed that you can edit. I set mine to 40% (up from the default 20%) and idle temps on my 4870 dropped from about 75C to 45C, and load temps dropped from about 95C to about 65C. 40% fan speed was right about at the upper limit I could set it to before the fan noise became annoying (the thing seriously sounds like a freaking jet engine at max speed).

It'd be nice if they'd add an option to change the fan speed in the control center, though. Reply